Excuse me for being very late to comment about the piece you wrote last year regarding the frequency of letters used in the English language. The article was posted on September 15, 2010, but I have only recently just read it. Anyway, in the article you had given the assumption that the frequency of letters used in English should be based upon their frequency as occurring in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. I have no objection to using that dictionary for the frequency of letters used in English words, but to assume that the frequency occurring in English words is the same as the frequency occurring is English usage is an absolutely untrue assumption. This is because not all words are used equally.

The simplest way to explain this is that while there is only one word “quiz” in the dictionary, and only one word “the” in the dictionary, why would you expect that the two words (and their component letters) to be used with equal frequency? My point is that you will hear (or see) the word “the” (and its component letters) hundreds of times more frequently than you will see or hear the word “quiz”, yet you only counted each letter (T, H, E, Q, U, I, Z) only once in your analysis of the dictionary. Most analyses of English usage that I see reveal a rather different ranking for letter frequency from the one you showed in your posting of 15 September 2010.

Thank you for your time in considering my opinion on the matter.

In thinking again about this question it struck me that in the case of Scrabble, though a word may be appear more than once on the board, there is no real connection between the words on the board and words used during conversation and in writing. Scrabble players select words to place on the board based on the letters available to them and the maximization of the score based on the scoring rules of the game. One could play Scrabble with just the lexicon of chemistry and find the game works quite well, though with a much smaller universe of likely players.

Thus, the issue for the frequency of the use of the letters in the lexicon of English is the appropriate question, not the frequency of the letters as found in a real stream of communication or “usage”.

This frequency topic reminded me of how peculiar frequency can be in human language.  Consider the English phoneme “th” (e.g. in the word “then”) in words in a lexicon of over 70,646 in an advanced learner’s dictionary and the frequency of use in the spoken text. The phoneme “th” occurs in only 0.12% of the words, yet comprises 3.56% of the phonemes in spoken usage. It ranks 43rd out of 44 phonemes in English as occurrences in the lexicon but 6th in spoken usage.

Below is a chart for further exploration.

One small revelation is that my recent lust for a fedora (thanks to that all around maven of the hip, David Drake) has been replaced by the need to get a hat like Popeye’s (not the spinach eater).

Karen informed me that this is actually Hackman’s hat, not the invention of the wardrobe dept.

Dinner, pot roast, I always get potted food on airlines, much less likely to be anything more than potted, was incongruously accompanied by a fortune cookie. The message is propitious,especially in light of my conversation in Berkeley Heights in the morning before departing for the airport.

The Santa outfit was inexplicably lacking a beard. A quick call on the local Web for help brought this offer from Matthew Tudor-Jackson up the street (left).

My first reaction was that this was something from a run amuck costume show for Louis XIV. On further consult with the fashionistas of BeLo3rd it was determined to be BeLo3rd!

So, I was ready for my outing as Santa for Winter Walk, December 3rd.

I dropped the big wig and just went with the ZZ Top length mustache beard combo.

You can see more pictures of this at the Davis Orton Gallery news page.

I was very busy with lots of little kids and not a few babies for three hours. I was amazed that the Santa myth continues merrily along despite the enormous seemingly every larger maw of commerce.

I discovered that kids in the 3 to 4 yr range know who Santa is but don’t know yet that they are supposed to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. I stopped asking and quickly moved the conversation to the imminent arrival of a candy cane. I guess that 3 and 4 yr olds are a blind spot in my life’s experiences.

7 to 10 yr olds wanted lots of electronic games and Ipod Touches (very specific about those). 11 to 12 yr olds wanted a phone. I foolishly asked the first few if they wanted a cellphone? They looked at me quizzically until I realized that they did not know that phones used to have wires coming out of them. What most surprised me is the persistence of some old toys. A significant number of 4 to 6 yr old girls asked for Barbie dolls and accessories. Only one girl requested an American Girl doll.  Their male counterparts asked for trains. Bicycles and scooters are also still popular.

One girl, age 12, (I asked each for their name and age) told me that she wanted a Merry Christmas for her family. I asked how many were in her family, “Two, Five, how many?” She thought for a moment and said “Forty”. “Oh, a merry Christmas for the extended family?” “Of course.” she replied.

Karen and I made our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Berkeley Heights and the Morgan-Ortons. This year we went via Roosevelt Island in NYC to drop of exhibition prints from our October show Street Photography / Surveillance with Bojune Kwon.

Ed went upscale on the wine for this meal

Wednesday evening dinner was cooked by Mr. Wonderful who brought back an old favorite for a re-run, meatloaf. This is the same meatloaf that was the subject of several earlier postings here. Of course all of this attention on a dish which has no recipe necessitated some head scratching. Once I got started in Meredith’s kitchen (I know that Ed makes rice and beans and other delicacies there, too, but this is Meredith’s kitchen) she hung around to kibitz. This lead to the discovery, not surprising given her penny pinching propensities, that she added oatmeal to her meatloaf too. The Wheatena I include was a novelty for her but I left out the carrots that hers included. Since my earlier jiggling of the memory banks I recalled that I also added either canned diced tomatoes or tomato juice to give some fluid for the cooking of the oatmeal and Wheetena. Spices include variably, basil, garlic, red pepper, black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, Pickapeppa, and catsup. Actually, the catsup is a required sealant for the surface of the meatloaf.

Not to get carried away further with TMI (where is Nyla when I need her steadying editorial hand), I also made a dish that was a real novelty for the Morgan-Ortons, kasha varnishke. My original plan was to make a basic Russian kasha, but Karen demanded the Jewish variant familiar in the US. I followed a recipe (this happens occasionally) at yourjewishmother.wordpress.com.

Thanksgiving Day

Since Meredith has to put in an appearance at the annual football contest between her high school and the local rival New Providence HS, we arrived fashionably late half way through the second period and departed after the half time extravaganza marching band foolery. Always the opportunist, Meredith stopped to feed the fish in her classroom after filling up on the the adulation of the crowd.

Before we could get Ed to peel a few potatoes, the following goofiness broke out:

Andrea, Noah, and Nyla arrived. Then next door neighbors Roland and Andrea. The feast was ready to begin. Karen took this panoramic shot over dessert. (Click on the image to see it full size)

Novelty Item

We had not noticed this little bit of wit from Meredith earlier. This inspired by one of Ed’s bad habits. Strikes many that there must be many more of these hidden about and to come. Ed has a lot of bad habits.

This is just to the left of the front door.

We named our team The Turkeys. This proved prescient. Despite much heckling on our part, Karen’s dispatch of a glass of wine to the floor, and much more laughter than justified by our performance, we squeaked out a place somewhat above last. But, as the saying goes, much fun was had all around.

Trivia Night at The Spotty Dog - Enid doing the work while we goofed.

I should fess up that I have rarely used a recipe. My genius is to open the refrigerator door, look in the pantry, wait for inspiration, then make something with what is at hand. Only in my recent ventures into Indian cuisine have I used a cookbook. Even that I gave up when I discovered the wonders of manjulaskitchen.com.

I have a picture of a 2007 version of my meatloaf. I am sure it included the signature Wheateena and oatmeal, canned tomatoes, and ketchup coating. I must have had a lot of onions and green peppers hanging around This one seems less gloppy than many that Jonathan and Andrea would remember. Maybe I got distracted and it was desiccated by a bit too much time in the oven?

I took special pride in making my meatloaf with so many additives that it looked as though the refuse from the grain aisle at the food coop had fallen in the mixing bowl along with a seasoning of hamburger. Oats was always a starting point along with plenty of chopped onions and green peppers. I also regularly added Wheetena, bulgur, even leftover brown rice. I always topped the mixture off with a coating of ketchup. But, even if put two eggs in to give it some structural glue, the meatloaf never actually loafed. It was always gloppy.

At some point, Jonathan thinks the late seventies, I was awarded a family medal. It is now seriously faded, but a medal nevertheless.

But the big news is that I received a medal! I am so excited. I don’t think I have ever gotten a medal for anything before. Not sure exactly why I am so enthralled. Every participant who finished the race, even the crawlers, received a medal. Still, I am excited.

My nod to Lee Friedlander and countless other rear view mirror afficianadoes.

Location:Warren St,Hudson,United States